David Cheriton, Stanford professor

Cheriton, a professor at Stanford and cofounder of Arista Networks, became one of the first investors in Google after Larry Page and Sergey Brin did a demo of their project on his front porch in 1998. That initial $100,000 check has obviously paid off, but Cheriton dislikes the thought of being a billionaire.

Pierre Omidyar, founder and chairman of eBay

Omidyar became a billionaire when eBay went public in 1998, but he never thought spending all of his money would be satisfying.

"We sort of skipped the 'regular rich' and we went straight to 'ridiculous rich,'" he said to Forbes. "I had the notion that, OK, so now we have all of this wealth, we could buy not only one expensive car, we could buy all of them. As soon as you realize that you could buy all of them, then none of them are particularly interesting or satisfying."

Azim Premji, chairman of Wipro Limited

As the chairman of tech services giant Wipro, Premji is India's wealthiest tech tycoon, but he hates spending money.

Premji routinely flies coach and takes a three-wheel auto rickshaw from the airport to the Wipro offices. He is known to monitor the toilet paper used at Wipro facilities, and he often reminds employees to turn the lights off in the office before they leave.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is one of three people in the world who has more billions in his possession than years lived.

Still, Zuckerberg is surprisingly unflashy about his wealth. He previously drove a black Acura TSX but recently upgraded to a Volkswagen GTI, both of which typically cost about $30,000.

In 2011, he bought a $7 million home in Palo Alto, but even that home is "still well below his means," according to the Los Angeles Times. On his Facebook profile, he lists "minimalism" and "eliminating desire" among his interests, and he's very rarely seen dressed in anything more formal than a t-shirt or hoodie.

Jan Koum, founder of WhatsApp

Koum may be worth billions now, but he came from humble beginnings. He was born in Kiev, Ukraine, and moved with his family to the U.S. when he was 16 years old. The family struggled and lived on food stamps.

Koum has continued his money-saving ways into adulthood — when WhatsApp was bought for $19 billion in February, Koum pressured Facebook to close the deal before he missed his flight to Barcelona, which he had purchased using frequent flier miles.

"What Tony is doing is out of the box, not typical, not normal," early Zappos investor Erik Moore said. "Most people would wonder why he doesn't ride off into the sunset with the amount of money he's earned."

Sergey Brin, cofounder of Google

It may seem counterintuitive to say that a man who owns several private planes is frugal, yet Brin has confessed to disliking spending money.

"From my parents, I certainly learned to be frugal and to be happy without very many things," he said in a 2007 interview. "It’s interesting — I still find myself not wanting to leave anything on the plate uneaten. I still look at prices. I try to force myself to do this less, not to be so frugal. But I was raised being happy with not so much."